How to: Theme your blog content for the entire year

I think we can all agree how important content marketing, specifically blog content is for your business. Not only does regular content help with your SEO, it also helps educate your clients and demonstrate your expertise in your field. We know how important it is and yet most of us have a major block when it comes to creating your own content.

Creating content doesn’t have to be hard, in this post I am going to show you how you can plan out a whole year of content in a few hours! Let’s do this!

Define YOUR Why

A good place to start is to define your why, if you haven’t watched Simon Sinek’s TED talk then I’ll wait while you go watch it... Isn’t it good?!

Once you have your why, write it down on the top of your brainstorming page. All your ideas should come back to or reinforce your why. Doing this will give you much more consistency in your marketing and will help you potential customers understand your business/product better.

Know more than your target audience

One of the most common things I hear is “I don’t know what to write about”. We need to remember that we are the experts and we have to explain our knowledge to those who are not experts. Reina Pomeroy says “what is duh to you, is mindblowing to others”. If you clients knew the answers to their questions they wouldn’t need you to help them. Think basic and simple. Don’t worry about feeling like you don’t know it all, you know more than your client/reader and that is all that matters.

Questions to ask yourself before brainstorming:

What is your most popular content?

Why are your readers coming to you?

What are your readers/clients looking for?

What do you want to be known for?

What are you commonly asked for by clients? FAQ

How can you show your clients your expertise?

Why should a client hire you?

Once you have asked these questions go search on forums, facebook groups, instagram, amazon reviews of books or where your clients are hanging out. Look for the questions they are asking, write them down, then answer them.

BRAINSTORM

Next, you should start brainstorming at least 12 themes. I like to start with months or seasons that have a simple/common/well known theme. For example, in January planning is a common theme. Maybe there are a lot of people who get engaged over the Christmas season and in January you can write posts about engagements and what to do next.

Also, note if you have any launches that are happening in the year. If you are planning a launch, make sure the content that leads up to the launch is applicable to what you are launching, so you can prep your audience.

Once you have more than 12 ideas written out, then start evaluating them. Do they match your why? Can you speak on those topics? Do you have ideas for topics that would relate to each theme.

4 TOPICS PER MONTH

Once you have chosen your 12 themes for the year, write out 4 topics beneath each of these themes. For example, my theme for January is planning your marketing. My topics are:

How to theme your content for the entire year (you’re reading this one!)

You may have noticed that this will leave you with 48 topics, instead of 52. This gives you room to add an extra topic to four of your themes. There is probably a theme where you have way more ideas, just add some extra topics on these themes.

Blog Content Ideas

Now you don’t want to spend the whole year writing the same format of post, it is good to vary your format and test to see which appeals most to your audience. Here are some examples of blog post formats.

Lists

Roundups

How tos

Highlight your customers/clients

How to use program/software/product/tool

Tips and tricks

Best practices

Complete guide

Beginners guide

Advanced guide

Case study

Walk through your process

Product reviews

SWIPE FILE FOR LATER

After this exercise you should have themes and topics for all 12 months and 52 weeks! Yay! Congratulations! Now, to make next year even easier, start a swipe file to keep all your potential topic ideas. Everytime you see a questions asked in a facebook group, or your client brings something up write it in the swipe file and save for later.